CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Now that Cleveland City Councilmen Jeffrey Johnson, Michael Polensek and Kevin Conwell have secured their seats for another four-year term, they say their alliance -- the so-called Northeast Cleveland Coalition -- is poised to rouse an unprecedented sense of regionalism in a city historically known for its fiefdoms.

Skeptical colleagues and City Hall insiders had predicted that the coalition would fizzle once it served its campaign purpose and especially once the city budget comes up for debate and council members scramble for dollars to fund favorite projects.

But Johnson, Polensek and Conwell said in interviews Wednesday that they are committed to serving their residents in a new way – championing initiatives in their neighbors’ neighborhoods and an economic development strategy to reinvigorate the commercial and industrial thoroughfares that draw their wards together.

The coalition formed after Council President Martin J. Sweeney granted Councilman Eugene Miller carte blanche in redrawing the lines of Ward 10 during a contentious redistricting process earlier this year. Many council observers had believed Johnson would be forced to run against Conwell after Sweeney consolidated their wards to eliminate one East Side council seat.

In April, Johnson, Polensek and Conwell pledged to support one another’s candidacies. If elected, the councilmen also promised to meet on a regular basis, along with leaders of their respective community development corporations, to discuss how each can lend support to the others' upcoming projects and initiatives.

In an interview Wednesday, Johnson said that among the coalition’s top priorities is commissioning an economic development study of the city’s East Side, exploring its assets, challenges and potentials.

Johnson said he would seek to discover how many jobs local businesses are providing, how much commercially zoned land is available and how strong the purchasing power is in the region. The study would be conducted with an eye toward developing East Side “destination neighborhoods,” reminiscent of the West Side's Tremont and Ohio City, he said.

Johnson said that at the heart of such a study would be the St. Clair Corridor, a desolate stretch of mostly vacant and blighted commercial and industrial property – the product of decades of disinvestment and neglect. The artery runs through the wards of all three councilmen.

In an interview Wednesday, Polensek echoed Johnson’s concern for St. Clair, and said that people who live on the side streets often complain that downtown – and particularly the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland – receive too much of the city’s attention and resources, while their neighborhood stands in ruins.

“Abandoned buildings, all gutted out and left wide open,” Polensek said. “There’s all type of illegal signage, people have painted stuff ugly. Some corner stores look like hell. Where are the inspectors? We need code enforcement and a game plan. It’s time to lay our cards on the table and work together.”

Conwell said in an interview that he is looking forward to collaborating with the others on ameliorating one of the city’s food deserts on the East Side.

“People cannot tolerate having to travel far to get the food and supplies they need to live,” Conwell said. “They move to neighborhoods where there are resources. And a grocery store is one of the anchors.”

Johnson has been steadily working on a plan to re-open the East Side Market near the intersection of East 105th Street and St. Clair Avenue. The market, which closed in 2007 after years of struggling to attract tenants and customers, would reopen with a renewed emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables and meats, Johnson said.

More details are expected later this month, as council considers legislation to authorize the project, he said.

The site of the market, which is in Johnson’s current ward, will be in Conwell’s after the new ward boundaries take effect in January.

The collaboration won’t stop there, the councilmen said. They plan on drawing together block club leaders for regular meetings to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the region’s crime problems. They will invite all five of their community development corporations to coalition meetings to offer feedback on their initiatives. They hope to create a regional ministerial alliance to help organize the greater community.

And although Polensek and Conwell don’t share Johnson’s zealotry for the preservation of Cleveland’s vacant housing stock, they have given him their blessing to begin developing a vacant housing strategy that balances preservation and restoration with demolition.

Johnson said that he, Polensek and Conwell respect and admire each others’ individual passions and priorities and are prepared to prove wrong the naysayers, who see their coalition as a political stunt.

And all three said Wednesday that Sweeney’s new ward map, which, they believe, was designed to disenfranchise them and fragment the East Side, backfired. Instead, the circuitous and unusually sprawling boundaries drew them together – forcing them to collaborate across their own ward lines, they said.

“(Sweeney) tore up the East Side deliberately,” Polensek said. “The only positive result is that we came together. I know that some of our colleagues try to spin it as politics. But it’s much more than that. This is where we grew up. We’re all from this neighborhood. These are our roots. And I’m looking forward to working with those guys out of the gate.”

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